


Chase Scene

by Sholio



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Hypothermia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-06
Updated: 2010-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's on the run with amnesia in a Chicago blizzard. Murphy's on his trail, but unfortunately he doesn't remember enough to know that she isn't the enemy. Takes place somewhere between Small Favor and Turn Coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chase Scene

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seventhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/gifts).



_Harry_

 

I'm running, and hurt, and alone. You know. The usual.

I can't remember what's after me. I can't remember why. It's all I can do to focus on breathing and moving and not falling over.

Or, maybe even that's too much for me at the moment, because apparently I _did_ fall over at some point. At least, I'm down. My hand's buried up to the wrist in slushy, dirty snow. The cold is yet another minor pain to add to the aches throughout my body, but all that's drowned out by my head. Feels like it's about to split open.

I drag myself slowly up to sit against a brick wall. I'm in an alley, and snowflakes settle lightly on my tipped-back face, melting as they touch my eyelashes and lips. It's right around freezing, just cold enough to be miserable, not cold enough for picture-postcard white snowdrifts. Typical Chicago winter. "Right," I say to myself, "I'm in Chicago."

My head hurts so bad that I expect to feel blood when I touch it, but there's nothing except melted snow and sweat matting down my hair. No tender bumps or anything. Just pain. I got hit with _something_ nasty, and I don't know what. All I know is it's hard to think. Really hard. My left shoulder and arm are mostly numb, and when I lift my arm stiffly, I discover that my shirt is charred underneath my black duster.

Hey. Cool coat, though. I wonder when I started wearing it.

Wow, something _really_ did a number on me.

I'm coherent enough to be aware that something is really, seriously wrong, but still not together enough to actually care. I do make sure to count my legs (two) and arms (two) and fingers (I give up at six, or maybe it's eleven, but anyway, there are enough to do wizardy things with, and that's what counts).

I'm still trying to count my fingers when a car pulls across the mouth of the alley, blocking off the light from the street and drawing my attention. I recognize the car -- I don't know from where, but I know it can't be good, especially when the person who gets out is yelling my name. I pull my thoughts together enough to know that I don't want to stick around to find out what they want with me.

" _Forzare!_ " I snap, mostly on autopilot. My control is even sloppier than usual, and I kick up a hurricane of trash and slushy snow in the alley. What I was trying to do was flip the car. What I actually manage to do is hit my attacker in the face with a blizzard of garbage, and knock him on his ass.

A wave of dizziness and nausea washes through me. It would've knocked me down if I hadn't been down already. For a minute my head hurts so bad I can't see. Then I manage to blink my watering eyes clear enough to see my pursuer getting back up. Time to roll. I've bought myself a minute's advantage and I better use it, because I don't know how many more of those I have left in me.

I scramble up and start running again. Or staggering. Whatever.

I need a better plan.

If only I could think straight, I might be able to make one. As it is, running is about the best I can do.

 

* * *

 

 _Murphy_

 

"Dresden!" I yelled after him as I wiped, oh God, I didn't even want to _know_ what out of my hair. The only response I got was a flurry of black coattails vanishing around the end of the alley.

I _so_ did not need this shit.

Literally, perhaps. I scrubbed my hand in the marginally cleaner snow.

I debated chasing him down the alley, then decided to go around and see if I could head him off at the other side. What was worrying me -- well, one of _many_ things worrying me at the moment -- was that Harry obviously had got his bells rung so hard that he didn't know who I was, and the thing that would just put a cap on this lousy night would be getting a fireball to the face. It stung my pride to admit it, but I knew I was just being realistic -- I couldn't take Harry in a fight. I couldn't even come close. It wasn't a matter of skill or stamina, just that we weren't even in the same league. Taking on a wizard in a fair fight was like trying to take on a tank with your bare hands, you know?

Which was, of course, why I'd called him earlier this evening.

My department had been called out that evening to investigate a disturbing-the-peace call in a quiet old Chicago neighborhood. I know, I know -- doesn't sound like Special Investigations business, does it? But when the patrol officers who responded saw something the size of a gorilla jump over an old lady's trash cans and then jump over her _house_ , they figured they'd better call SI. And I figured _I'd_ better call Harry to ask for his input. I mean, some things you can just shoot. We can deal with those. But sometimes, shooting 'em just makes things worse, so I figured it'd be a good idea to consult an expert before we go and accidentally cause it to grow to Godzilla proportions or whatever.

Not that I'd admit to Dresden that I consider him an expert on anything. No need to give him any easy openings. But still, he'd taken one look at it -- the thing was crouching on top of a rooftop at the time, one long hairy arm hooked around the chimney, and gone, "Oh, that's a wight," like anybody ought to know that.

"Good for it," I'd said. "How do we kill it?"

"Oh," Harry said, "the usual way."

Which was how I ended up chasing his skinny ass all over town in a blizzard. I suppose for us, this _was_ sort of the usual way, though now with extra amnesia for super special fun.

I drove slowly around the block, trying to figure out where he'd gone. Harry was not exactly inconspicuous, and that black coat of his, while perfectly stylish under most circumstances -- or so Harry claimed; I hadn't the heart to tell him otherwise -- would make him even more obvious when the handful of other pedestrians were more appropriately dressed for the weather.

I hoped he'd have the sense to go to ground for a while -- find himself a warm place and waited out the storm. But I doubted it. The problem was, whatever had happened to Harry wasn't anything so simple as just plain, run-of-the-mill amnesia (if there is such a thing).

I wasn't actually sure what _had_ happened to him.

We'd played a rousing game of chase-the-wight for twenty minutes or so after discovering that Harry's magical blasts slid off it like water off a freshly waxed Mercedes. ("Huh," Harry had said. "That's weird.") My gun still worked, or at least seemed to hurt it, and made it scared of us and damned hard to find. Then it got the drop on us -- jumped on Harry off the top of a building and landed on him. They'd both gone flying off a second-floor fire escape into a Dumpster. They thrashed around in the alley below while I tried to climb down the ice-slick steps without breaking my neck -- I'd been almost all the way up to the roof when that thing had gone over me and down the side of the building onto Harry like a big furry gray comet.

I was paying too much attention to my feet to spare more than a couple of glances at the brawl going on below me. I did stop at one point and try to line up a shot, but there was no way I could've plugged the wight without too much risk of hitting Harry. His duster would repel bullets, but the way the two of them were rolling around, there were a lot of parts of him that weren't protected -- like, say, his head.

I have enough on my conscience already. Shooting my best friend through the head really isn't something I needed to add to my per diem nightmare allotment.

So I scrambled down the fire escape as quick as I could. From below me, I heard a lot of thumping and crashing as they knocked over garbage cans, along with shrill screeching (the wight) and loud cursing (Harry). A sudden green flash lit up the alley just as I figured I was close enough to swing over the side of the fire escape and drop the last eight feet or so. By the time I straightened up, Harry was going one way and the wight, limping badly, had lit out in the opposite direction. I got one shot at it as it went by me, and I know I made contact -- it staggered and screamed -- but then it was around the corner and out of sight.

I'd also caught a glimpse of something around its neck, like one of those studded collars they put on Rottweilers -- only with glittering green gems in place of the steel studs. For all the good _that_ did me. Maybe it would've meant something to Harry. But my official SI consultant had just run off in a snowstorm, and I had a split second to figure out which one to follow.

Guess which one I chose.

Best I could figure was that Harry'd gotten some kind of magical blowback from whatever he'd tried to do to the wight. Either that, or the critter itself had hexed him, or maybe someone else acting through it had done it. In any case, he was messed up but good.

I circled the block again, but I couldn't see Harry anywhere, and finally I ended up back at the alley where I'd lost him. Damn it. I got out of my car, bracing myself against the freezing wind, and looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of fluttering coattails as he climbed a fire escape or leaped from rooftop to rooftop or any of the other stupid things he'd been doing in the last hour in an effort to shake me off his tail.

No such luck.

I hated to admit it, but maybe it was time to get some help.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry_

 

I think I shook them off my trail. I guess. I'm not even really sure where I am.

All I know is that I'm cold, and my head hurts. I wrap my coat more tightly around my body. It doesn't do much to stave off the cold.

I stumble onto a busier street, with traffic crawling slowly through the murk. I stop and back up, my stomach curling with dread. I don't want populated places. Don't want to hurt anyone, or lead anything to them. I'm supposed to protect people, not hurt them.

I don't know what's after me. I just know it's bad.

I need to find somewhere safe and I don't know what's safe right now. For an instant, a thought comes out of the haze, clear as day: _I can go to the_ \-- And then it's gone, back into the blizzard. I try to hold onto it, because there's more, there's so much more behind it. I know that I have places to go. I have people who love me and would help me if they could. I'm not alone.

\-- _Die alone_ \--

... and I'm staring up into the spinning flakes of snow, my head tipped back against something hard. Brick. I guess I fell down again.

A small, clear voice inside my head tells me that if I don't do something, don't get somewhere warm, I'm going to die out here. But I can't stop running. And there's another part of me that wonders if I really _should_ die out here -- if the reason why I can't stop running is because I've done something wrong, something unforgivable. I wish I could remember.

"Are you okay, mister?"

The words blur together, twisting and slithering away from me, and then she says them again and I manage to hold onto them long enough to put them together, one after the other. I squint up at her. She's an older woman, her neat gray hair tucked under a plastic net. Her coat is a little worn around the edges. There's a shopping bag in one hand. She looks tired, and worn down, and kind.

The thought comes to me quickly: She might be one of _them_. (Whoever _they_ are.) I can't trust her.

And right on the heels of that: _She's in danger, because of me. I have to get away from her._

I stare at her and then scramble to my feet, leaning against the side of the building. "Get away," I mumble. I'm not sure if I'm talking to myself or to her. She stares at me, eyes wide, and then backs away, turns and half-runs, slipping on the sidewalk in her low, impractical boots.

Get away.

Good advice.

I turn my back on the street with its scattered pedestrians and cars. I have to go somewhere that I can't hurt anybody, somewhere I can fight without being a danger to anyone around me. As if a silver thread has unspooled before me, I suddenly find that I know the way to a place like that.

 

* * *

 

 _Murphy_

 

I waited impatiently in my car across from the ritzy block of Gold Coast apartment towers. My knee jiggled, bouncing my gloved hand with my phone resting on it.

Eventually, the door of the building I'd been watching opened and closed. I leaned over and popped the locks on the passenger's side.

My newly acquired consultant in the mystic arts slipped and slid across the road. I was pleased to see that he had as much trouble as I did staying upright on the slippery street. He wasn't alone; there was a smaller figure with him, bundled up to the eyeballs. He assisted the smaller person across the street with a gloved hand hooked through their arm, and held the door for them as they gracefully slid into the backseat. I didn't have to ask to know who it was.

"We could take my car," he said as he joined me in the front. "Less chance of getting stuck. Also, it has something called _style_."

"I'm sorry?" I retorted. "I've seen that truckasaurus you drive. I'm guessing bulldozers get better gas mileage."

Thomas laughed.

Behind me, the figure in the backseat pulled off its hat, letting free a spill of silver hair. "Hello again, Sergeant Murphy."

"Hi, Justine." I caught her eyes in the rear-view mirror. Thomas hadn't said anything about guests. "You sure you want to come? There might be fighting. Pretty intense fighting."

"Justine can handle herself," Thomas said.

I gave him a flat look. "I wasn't asking you. I was asking her."

"Thomas is right," Justine said in her quiet voice. "I'll be all right. Lara's not expecting me back for hours yet -- and with the roads getting so bad, I told her I might have to find a hotel in the city overnight." She smiled faintly. "Sitting alone in Thomas's empty apartment isn't what I had in mind."

"Besides," Thomas said, "it's _Harry_. He won't hurt her."

"He tried to hurt _me_ ," I said.

That shut him up.

"Besides," I said, "Harry's not the only dangerous thing out there. We've also got a supernatural nasty out there somewhere that sheds magic like _you_ shed dirt." Thomas lifted a lip at me. "And I'm not entirely convinced there isn't a bigger player. Harry's hard to take down -- _really_ hard. Something messed him up so bad that he doesn't know who I am. That's not easy to do, and I'd be surprised if some two-bit supernatural thug is up to the task."

Thomas looked back at Justine, and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"I'll stay in the car," she said. "You might need a getaway driver."

I sighed. Arguing with Justine was like fighting with a pillow. It didn't really fight back, but it absorbed everything you could throw at it without altering its basic shape. I turned back to Thomas. "So," I said. "You told me over the phone that you thought you could find him."

"I'm not a wizard," Thomas said, "but I do know this one spell. I already did the prepwork inside."

He held up his pentacle necklace. It dangled, rotating slowly, and gradually its aimless spin resolved into a steady, metronome-like swinging. I pulled cautiously away from the curb and turned down a street that headed in the right general direction.

"Handy spell," I said. "I always thought you had to be a wizard to do magic. Is it possible for someone who's, you know, completely non-magical to learn it?"

Thomas hesitated for a moment before answering. "You could," he said. "But I don't know if you should."

I gave him a sharp look. "I've been on this merry-go-round with Harry a time or two, okay? I'm not safer if I don't know things. I just don't know enough to make an informed decision. And I _hate_ feeling that way."

"It's not that," he said. "It's -- Look, right now, from the point of view of most of the supernatural world, you're a complete non-entity, right? You're nobody."

"Gee," I said. "Thanks."

Thomas gave me a quick, sideways smile. "Believe me, that's a good thing. You're a normal, a mundane. A muggle, if you like." Justine gave a little snort, and reached a gloved hand over the seat back to tweak his hair. "They have rules for dealing with people like you," Thomas went on, "and most of the rules protect you, believe it or not."

I felt my hands growing tight on the steering wheel. "If there are rules, then it seems like the magical world isn't very good at following them. I have a filing cabinet full of reports, Raith, in which I've managed to find ways to change _Killed by rampaging ghoul_ to _Run over by a cement truck_ , but the family doesn't hurt any less -- not when it's their brother or mother or child who's the victim."

Thomas raised a hand, fingers spread placatingly. "I know, I know. But those are isolated incidents in the grand scheme of things -- collateral damage in other conflicts, rogue practitioners, things like that. If the rules didn't exist, your world would be wiped away, Karrin. Normal human beings wouldn't have a chance."

"You'd be surprised," I said tightly, "what normal human beings can do when you get enough of them angry enough. Just ask the Black Court about that. Or, let's see, how about all those ghouls, vampires and other creatures of the night that you've _watched_ me kill?"

He sighed. "Look, work with me here, okay? If you become a practitioner, even just a little bit, you're not on that side of the wall any more. You're on this side -- _my_ side, Harry's side. You won't still enjoy the extra little edge you get from being a magical nobody. And I'd think very seriously before you give up a pretty big advantage for the tiny little advantage that you might get from knowing a spell or two."

I was silent for a moment, driving, my jaw locked. In the backseat, Justine was very quiet. Finally I said, forcing the words out, "I do see what you're saying. I'll think about it."

Thomas nodded. He didn't say anything.

I drew a long breath and let it out. "And now, let's find Harry and bag ourselves a wight."

"A wight?" Thomas said after a moment.

I sighed, and began to explain.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry_

 

As I stumble through the snow, trying to pull together the shattered edges of my thoughts, I'm becoming more convinced that I'm probably the bad guy in this scenario. That woman in the alley was a cop. I'm not sure how I know, but I do, with a bone-deep certainty. And I'd attacked her ...

The idea that I might have hurt her leaves me breathless with a kind of pain that has nothing to do with my aching head.

If she's after me, there must be a reason.

 _Die alone._ The words echo in my memory, bitter with hate.

You don't say things like that to a good, decent person. Whoever I am, whatever I've done, at some point I did something to earn that curse.

A honking horn draws me out of my reverie. A cab swerves around me, horn blaring. I'm in the middle of a street. I stumble towards the sidewalk and find myself in temporary shelter under the support structure for a freeway or maybe the el. I lean on a heavy metal beam for a minute, dizzy.

My left arm has begun to throb. I pull up my charred sleeve and find a row of little red marks burned into my skin. I can't remember how it happened. When I touch them with my fingertips, it makes my right hand tingle.

Left hand draws energy. Even with my thoughts so scrambled, I can get enough neurons firing all together to understand that this is at least part of my problem right here. I just don't know what to do about it.

The only thing I can do is go on. I walk, my head down. Sometimes I fall. It feels like I'm being pushed forward, or maybe pulled; I don't know if I'm running from something, or towards it, but I only know that I have to keep moving.

If I stop moving in this storm, I'll die. But that's not the only reason. There's a sense of urgency pushing me forward, making me get up when I fall. I can't tell if it comes from inside me or if it's some outside agency, and I'm so dazed I hardly care.

 

* * *

 

 _Murphy_

 

We left Thomas's Gold Coast neighborhood and headed down Lakeshore Drive towards Navy Pier. To my surprise, we didn't turn back into the city. The amulet continued to point out towards the south and east. "Looks like he's heading for the lake," Thomas murmured, his voice tight, watching the pentacle swing faster.

Okay, that couldn't be good. Maybe he was just wandering at random, but especially given his condition at the moment, he'd come a long way from where we'd first encountered the wight. A really long way. A growing sense of urgency made me push my foot down harder on the gas pedal.

The museums and businesses on and around the Pier were mostly closed, though never entirely dark, and the blizzard gave a fairyland quality to the lights gleaming through the falling snow. We drove past the exits for the Pier and crossed the mouth of the Chicago River, and the angle of the swinging pentacle rotated suddenly. I took the next exit, which spit us out near the river mouth and the lakeside end of the walking trails along the river's edge. The parkland and trails looked cold and lonely under a soggy blanket of snow. Burnham Harbor, where Thomas kept his boat, was a mile or so south of us. I turned onto the access road for DuSable Harbor. It was unplowed, and my car slewed through the wet snow.

"Knew we should've taken mine," Thomas murmured, his eyes intent on the swinging pentacle necklace.

"Shut up."

I parked in front of a security gate bearing a CLOSED FOR SEASON sign. It was just as well; I doubted if I could have made it much farther without getting stuck. We stepped out into the wet, falling snow, and I passed my keys to Justine. "Okay, Justine, you're our wheelman. Get the car turned around if you can without getting stuck, and be ready to drive if we come screaming back with monsters on our tail."

"Yes, ma'am," Justine said.

"If we don't come back in a reasonable length of time," I went on, "I don't expect you to wait out here all night. Get yourself and the car to somewhere safe, and call the Chicago PD. Ask for Special Investigations and see if you can talk to Stallings or Rawlins. Wake them up if you have to, and tell them what happened."

Justine looked at me with wide eyes, then at Thomas. "Leave you out here?"

"She's right," Thomas said gently. "But don't worry; all we have to do is round up my wayward brother and bring him back here. How hard can it be?"

I kicked him in the shin. "If fifty wights jump us, I'm blaming you."

Thomas snorted. He lifted a gloved hand to touch Justine's cheek, then turned away.

"Stallings or Rawlins," I reminded her. She nodded.

I waded after Thomas through the snow. I was wearing my good boots and my feet stayed toasty, but I kept thinking about Harry, out here in that stupid coat and street shoes. He'd be lucky if he hadn't frostbitten something by now. And this was assuming he hadn't met up with the wight again and got something torn off. While it was difficult to figure out why Harry was doing anything right now, one likely scenario I could see for him coming out to the lake was that he was either chasing something or being chased by it.

"Are you armed?" I asked Thomas.

He lifted his coat briefly to show me his giant Desert Eagle pistol on one hip and a wicked hooked knife -- a khukhri -- on the other.

"Wow," I said. "Huge gun, huge knife, huge car. A person might think you were over-compensating for something."

Thomas laughed. "Harry runs around with a six-foot staff. I don't think I'm the one who needs to worry about over-compensating."

That cut a little too close to things I was trying not to think about. I focused on wading through the snow without falling on my ass.

"There he is," Thomas said.

I looked up and glimpsed Harry on the narrow causeway leading out to the breakwater, plodding forward steadily and weaving from side to side. Black water glistened on either side of the road. I could easily see Harry's lurching steps carrying him straight into one of the guardrails and over it into the lethally cold waters of Lake Michigan.

Thomas must have had similar thoughts, because he broke into a jog. "Hey! Harry!"

Harry stopped and stood, swaying. He looked over his shoulder.

Thomas closed ground on him rapidly. I hung back, because I wasn't eager to get another _Forzare!_ to the face, or something worse. Thomas slowed to a walk. "Man, you look like shit."

Harry's shoulders tightened -- not at Thomas's words, I was pretty sure, but at Thomas's proximity. I tensed up, ready to dodge or run if I had to.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry_

 

They've found me.

I can't think fast enough or clear enough to know what to do. But my hand closes around my blasting rod.

 

* * *

 

 _Murphy_

 

I watched from a distance as Thomas held out a hand to his brother. "I know you're pretty messed up right now, man, but let's get you inside before we all freeze, okay?"

Harry spun around and raised his right hand, blasting rod gripped tightly and pointing at Thomas's face.

I shouted "Thomas!" as Harry bellowed " _Fuego!_ "

Thomas's White Court reflexes saved him; he flung himself backwards, and momentum carried him through the snow at the edge of the road and over the guardrail into the water. I threw myself down in the snow, though I was far enough away that I just caught the edge of a wash of heat.

I pushed myself up on shaking arms, to see Harry fall to his knees in a puddle of meltwater, dropping the blasting rod, with his hands pressed to his temples. "Harry!" I called. "We're not here to hurt you!"

He looked up and gave me a wide-eyed, tormented look before scrambling to his feet and heading for the breakwater in a shambling run.

I groaned and went to help Thomas out of the water. He was trying to pull himself up, but his wet clothes hampered him. His dark hair was slicked to his skull, and he looked shaken and even paler than usual. I tried to restrain the urge to tell him that I'd told him so.

"Told you so."

Okay, so I didn't try very hard.

"Gosh, Sergeant, thanks for not rubbing it in." Soaked to the skin, he was already shivering; then I saw something about him -- _change_ , his face hardening a bit, his eyes growing paler and his features shifting very subtly. The shaking stopped.

"You gonna be okay?" I asked him, although if he was having to draw on his vampire side to keep himself warm, I was more worried about me.

"Yes," Thomas said shortly, and looked past me. I followed his gaze. Harry had almost reached the breakwater. There wasn't a whole lot out there. The snow-covered road curved left, towards a handful of structures, a small parking lot and helipad, lit up with floodlights gleaming through the snow. To the right, the breakwater itself ran parallel to the shore, ruler-straight until it vanished into the night and the storm. The water inside the breakwater was flat, dark and flecked with ice, the grid of mooring slips empty for the winter. On the outside, I could see waves kicking up spray in the glare of the helipad's floodlights.

Falling into the water on the inside of the breakwater was dangerous mostly because of the cold. On the outside, though -- that was Lake Michigan out there, wild and nasty, an inland sea with a winter gale brewing across it.

"We need a plan," Thomas muttered.

"You distract him, I jump him," I said. "Or vice versa, I guess; whatever works."

Thomas gave a low, sardonic laugh. "Your plans are very simple. I approve." Then he tensed up beside me, and I felt my own muscles lock rigid, because something had moved out on the breakwater, something that definitely _wasn't_ blowing snow. I had a moment to hope that it was just some unlucky sap pulling maintenance duty or something, but then it straightened up on too-long, badly jointed limbs, and shit, shit, _shit_. I could even see the glimmer of the green gems in its collar.

Thomas drew his Desert Eagle, worked the action and tilted it to drain water out of the barrel. A lot of civilians think guns won't fire if the bullets get wet, but with modern ammunition it's not really a problem, at least no longer than he'd been in the lake. "I take it that's your wight?"

"It's not _my_ wight," I said. "This isn't a coincidence."

"Ah, that must be the kind of deductive reasoning that makes the Chicago PD such a marvel of efficiency," Thomas murmured. Before I even had time to riposte back at him, he'd taken aim and snapped off several quick shots with the Desert Eagle.

At this distance, in these conditions, I'm not sure if even I would have been able to hit it with anything short of a sniper rifle. Thomas's first shot went too low, raising a puff of snow at the creature's feet, but he corrected quickly -- at least one or two of the other shots hit home, and the beast shrieked and flinched, spinning to face in our direction. It executed a twenty-foot leap from the breakwater to the boardwalk beside an empty mooring slip, heading in our direction.

Well, at least its attention was off Harry now.

Thomas jerked his head in his brother's direction. "You get him. I'll keep it busy."

Great. Here I was, right back where I'd started. I looked down the causeway and saw Harry at the very end, staring glassily at the wight as it took another great jump across the water separating two rows of empty slips. The wind flattened Harry's duster to his narrow body and carried it out behind him like a black flag. I had an awful mental image of Harry just losing his balance and going end-over-end into the waves rolling against the breakwater.

That was enough to galvanize me into action. With my Sig in one hand, I took off running towards Harry, while the sharp reports of the Desert Eagle rolled over the water behind me. I snatched up the blasting rod as I passed it; Harry was going to want this, if we ever got him back to normal.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry_

 

I stand in the teeth of the wind, and the icy chill is almost a good kind of pain. It helps a little with the fog in my head. I'm dizzy, weak, sick to my stomach, but I can _think_ again.

And my main thought is: Where the hell am I? And what am I doing here?

That's Lake Michigan in front of me, unless I've somehow taken a wrong turn and wandered all the way to the Atlantic, but I don't _think_ so. Besides, that's Navy Pier on my left, intermittently visible through the blowing snow.

I slowly become aware that someone is firing a gun somewhere nearby. Okay, maybe my brain still isn't quite working at full speed. I turn and look over my shoulder, and the first thing I see is a woman charging towards me with a gun. The wind whips her blond hair around her head like a halo.

My first instinct is to attack. I start to raise my right hand, trying to hold it steady through the shivers wracking me. But I know her. I'm sure that I do. I hesitate, my hand half-raised, fingers curled.

She stops about twenty feet away from me. One hand still holds the gun, but it's pointed down at the ground. In the other hand, she's got my blasting rod. "Harry?" she says. She sounds uncertain.

"Yeah?"

She offers me a hesitant smile. Her face is pink with cold. It looks good on her, I think inanely -- whoever she is. "Do you know me?" she asks.

Behind her, there's a tremendous splash. But I can't spare attention to figure out what it was or whether it's going to be a problem in a minute. The question that she's asking me seems like the most important one in the world, and I try to hang onto it, to keep it from slipping away into the haze. I want to answer it. I want to make her smile again. I just don't know what the right answer is.

"I don't know," I tell her. "Maybe?"

She takes a cautious step towards me. I lower my hand all the way. I still can't figure out where I know her from, but every instinct says to trust her, and since all the lobes of my brain aren't talking to each other right now, I guess I'm gonna have to go with instinct. Sorry there, Logic and Reason; looks like we're riding the Gut Feeling Express today.

She starts to smile.

And then her blue eyes widen and her mouth opens as she's yanked sideways. My gaze snaps down to her feet. The last thing I see before my thoughts blur into static again is something big and gray, half-in and half-out of the water, clutching her ankle.

 

* * *

 

 _Murphy_

 

"Fuck!" I yelled as I was hauled off my feet. _I deserve this,_ I thought grimly as I hit the snow-covered road with a bone-rattling thud. I just made a rookie mistake: I'd taken my attention off my surroundings, focused on Harry instead. Now I was paying the price.

I'd dropped Harry's blasting rod when I fell, but managed to keep my gun. I could feel a grip like iron around my ankle, and I twisted around, trying to get a look at whatever was dragging me into the harbor. Long gray fingers -- oh _fuck_ no. But it was: the damn wight had jumped into the water to get away from Thomas, come up from underneath, and now it had me.

Thomas sprinted down the causeway towards me, reloading the Desert Eagle as he ran. "Karrin! Hang onto something!"

"Like what?" I screamed back, digging the fingers of my free hand uselessly into the snow. Then I gave up and used it to brace the gun. At this angle, it was nearly impossible to aim, but on the other hand, at point-blank range, I could hardly miss. I unloaded half a clip into the wight's flat, ugly face.

It shrieked, let go of me and ducked under the water.

Thomas fisted one shoulder of my jacket and yanked me to my feet with as little effort as if I'd been a kitten. _Damn_ , he was strong. "You hurt?" he asked me.

"No." My ankle had been wrenched when I'd fallen, but I could stand. As I got my balance and Thomas let go, I looked up to see what Harry had been doing through all of this.

Nothing, apparently. He looked dazed and vacant -- and awful. His dark hair was matted with melted snow and lashed by the wind into even more of a ragged mess than usual. He'd split his lip at some point, probably when he fell off the fire escape, and half-dried blood smeared the side of his face, along with bruises. He was very pale, almost blue, except for bright spots of color on his nose and cheekbones.

But the worst part was the disconnected, hollow look in his eyes. Harry was always so _together_. I'd seen him hurt, scared, furious, sick -- but always, there had been that sharp intelligence in his eyes. Now, when he turned his eyes towards me, they were wide and unfocused. I'd never seen that look on him before, and I hated it.

Worse, there was a sort of vague, confused fear. He took a step backwards, then another, floundering into the deeper snow at the edge of the breakwater. His feet slid in it, and the backs of his legs hit the guardrail where the road curved, throwing him off balance.

Sheer horror paralyzed me for an instant. He was too far -- even as I started to leap towards him, I knew there was nothing I could do, as he started to fall into the meat-grinder of fractured ice and breaking waves below him.

Thomas lunged for him. I'd never seen anyone move that fast. Even during the fight with the ghouls in the Raith Deeps, I wasn't sure he'd managed that kind of speed. As gravity started to catch Harry, Thomas caught him too, in a death-grip on his duster's collar, and yanked him back onto the road so hard that he went to his hands and knees --

\-- which was when something like a pile driver slugged me from behind, throwing me across the road. Thomas spun around and slapped me out of the air. Rather than sailing into the icy lake, I hit the guardrail, taking most of the impact on my shoulder, and fell facefirst into the snow.

The whole thing had taken mere seconds.

I raised my head to see the wight looming where I'd been standing. It was soaking wet, and ice was already forming on its matted gray fur. Half its face was a ruined mess, the black ichor that passed for its blood smoking slightly when the snow settled on it. One of its legs twisted under it; one long arm was matted and dripping with that black, smoking blood. We'd inflicted a lot of damage, but it just wouldn't give _up_.

"Oh, just _die_ already," I snarled, and raised my gun. My left arm was still numb from the collision with the guardrail, but the wight wasn't _that_ far away. I unloaded my Sig as Thomas opened up with the Desert Eagle. The initial barrage drove it a few steps back, screaming in pain and rage, but as it recovered it ducked to the left with a speed that almost matched Thomas's, and the rest of our bombardment missed.

It took me a second to realize that it wasn't merely trying to escape, and by then it was too late.

The wight snatched Harry as it went, dragging him along as if he weighed nothing. It spun around to face us, with one long arm holding Harry against its chest, and the fingers of the other curled around his neck, pulling his head back.

Thomas hissed furiously between his teeth, a completely inhuman sound. Neither of us could shoot without hitting Harry. I took advantage of the opportunity to get my feet under me again, my nearly empty gun wavering across its forehead. Its mouth was half open, the jagged teeth resting against the back of Harry's skull.

Feeling was returning to my left arm in pins and needles. I opened and closed my hand, flexing it, and then raised it to support my gun.

It wasn't quite a Mexican standoff because the wight held all the cards, and from the lopsided grin on its ruined face, it knew it. It could rip Harry's head off, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Someone began to clap -- long, slow, theatrical claps.

"What an amusing performance," a female voice said, and I turned my head just in time to see a woman in a flowing white gown rise out of the churning waters of Lake Michigan, standing on a frozen wave.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry_

 

There's nothing in my head but white noise and static and pain -- and then a bolt of clarity, like a shaft of light between clouds, as I stare at the woman standing on the frozen arch of a wave above the rolling breakers of Lake Michigan.

And I know her, as I've known no one else so far. She's Mab, the Winter Queen.

The memory of the last time I spoke to Mab rises up in me, sudden and sharp, the clearest thing in my muddled, aching head. That time, she'd spoken to me through the malk Grimalkin. This time, Mab's mouthpiece is a slim, naked child with wispy white hair. She looks no older than ten, and she crouches at Mab's side, nearly covered by the flowing skirts. Mab holds her by a heavy rope connected to a collar around her neck. The girl's ribs jut out and her lips are blue with cold. Sympathy for her and anger at her tormenter washes over me in a wave, but I can also see that her ears are pointed, and her dull, half-lidded eyes are much older than the child's body she wears. No naked child could live for long in this weather, anyway. She's another creature of Winter, apparently one who displeased her cold mistress.

Mab's proximity feels like a cold wind from the lake, blowing away more of the fog in my head. My thinking is becoming rapidly clearer, and I'm becoming more conscious of my various hurts, including the way I'm standing with my back arched and my neck twisted. That seems kind of stupid, so I try to move -- and instantly, hands like iron bars tighten on my upper arm and my neck. I feel hot breath stir my hair.

Oh. Well.

This sucks.

 

* * *

 

 _Murphy_

 

Even if I'd wanted to move, I couldn't have. It felt like a heavy wet quilt had settled on me, pressing down until I had to exert all my willpower just to remain standing.

This was the kind of power that Thomas had been talking about. I could talk a brave game about the place of humanity in the larger magical universe, because I _believed_ it -- I believed wholeheartedly that humanity as a species could take their rightful place among any gathering of the powerful, the worthy, the worthwhile. But the _vastness_ of her power shivered me to the core. I was not only incapable of harming her, but I couldn't even _try_.

My mind was still my own, though I made sure not to look into her eyes; I wasn't sure if it would matter, but it seemed like a bad idea. I had a pretty strong suspicion that this was the Winter Queen I'd heard so much about from Harry. The theatrical white get-up and the frozen wave were a dead giveaway.

And I'd thought _vampires_ were fond of melodrama.

The wight made a small gurgling sound, like a teakettle about to boil over. I managed to move my head a little so that I could see it. While I was no expert at reading the mental state of magical monsters, I could see that its triumphant grin had frozen in a pained rictus. I'd assumed at first that it and the Winter Queen were on the same side, but it looked no happier to see her than we were.

The girl resting against Mab's skirts stirred, and her mouth opened. When she spoke, the voice that emerged carried inflections that were nothing like those of a child. "I believe," she said, in clear, high-pitched tones, "that thou hast stolen something which belongs to me."

The wight's whole body shifted minutely. I recognized it instantly as a "perp preparing to flee" movement. Apparently, so did Mab, because she made a small gesture with one slender hand.

A wave lapped up over the edge of the roadway and washed across the wight's feet, then froze instantly. Ice crackled up its legs, across its body, and over its horrified face. The fingers around Harry's throat froze in place, tightening reflexively as they did so. Harry made a tiny choking sound. It was strangling him.

I struggled to unlock my jaw enough to speak. Thomas, with a visible effort, turned his head to dip it briefly in the direction of the Winter Queen, though I could see the anger in his gray eyes. "Lady," he said, "what of the wizard?"

"Ah," Mab said, through the girl's voice, "his fate is of great concern to thee, is it?"

"He's a worthy adversary," Thomas said. Harry made another small choking sound, and Thomas's eyes darted to him before he could stop himself. Harry's face was starting to gain a purplish cast; his air wasn't _completely_ cut off, but if we didn't get him free soon, he'd really be in trouble. A hot rush of anger climbed through me, and though Thomas's face was a mask, I could read some of my own rage and helplessness in his eyes.

I saw Mab's lips curl in a tiny smile, and I thought suddenly, _She knows. I don't know how, but she knows they're brothers and she plans to use it._

"I believe that the wizard's current problems are of his own making," Mab said. "However, I would be happy to help him. What would thee offer _me_ in return for this service?"

Oh shit. Harry had warned me on multiple occasions about faeries and deals.

Thomas's eyes darted sideways to Harry again. "What do I have that you want?"

I threw everything I had into moving my stupid, stubborn mouth, and finally managed to get my jaw unlocked a bit. "Don't," I managed to say.

"Stay out of this, Sergeant," Thomas said in a low, harsh voice.

Mab gave me a calculating look. "It would appear that the mortal hath something to offer me, as well."

And suddenly I could move my mouth and face, even if the rest of me was still locked in place. I opened my mouth to say something to Thomas, along the lines of _Don't give her anything she wants, you idiot,_ but then something else clicked over in my head and suddenly, I had an idea. "It seems to me, Your Highness," I said instead, "that you owe _us_."

Thomas's mouth opened, then closed. I braced myself for her anger, but instead, she looked very mildly amused. "Explain."

"You said that the wight stole something from you, right?" I said.

"Indeed," Mab's voice said, and with a manicured finger, she indicated the collar encrusted with green gemstones around the neck of the frozen wight. "It was a clever coup, I shall grant, even if the pitiful creature had no hope of evading my justice."

"But," I said quickly, "it was _Harry_ who brought it back to you, right?" Now that I was talking, I couldn't seem to stop. Maybe I was channeling my inner Harry or something. "You _used_ him. Don't deny it. There's no way that you didn't engineer at least a little of what happened tonight. Not directly, maybe, but there's got to be a reason you didn't just march into downtown Chicago, take what was yours, and head back to the Nevernever with it. And I think it's because you didn't want to get your hands dirty. Why bother, when you figured that Harry's bound to get involved just like he would with any threat to the city, and get close enough to whatever that thing is to get his head messed up, and lead the wight straight back to you?"

I paused. The only sounds were the cry of the wind and the muted roar of the waves. Thomas was staring at me. Mab's face hadn't changed, but I could feel the intensity of her regard sharpen on me. It was not a pleasant feeling.

"So here's what I'm thinking," I said after I'd given her sufficient time to think -- and myself enough time to moisten my bone-dry lips and tongue, because breaking into a coughing fit in the middle of negotiating wouldn't be good. "You don't want to owe Harry a favor. You certainly don't want to be held responsible for breaking the Accords by involving a wizard in your private business." I wasn't sure if that was even a valid point to raise -- I had only the vaguest idea of what the Accords entailed, from what Harry had said about them -- but I saw her eyes widen a fraction and then narrow. "So, why don't you do him a favor in return for the one he did you, and then you'll be even."

"A favor?" Mab's captive voice inquired. I thought I detected a low note of menace in it, and spoke faster.

"Yes," I said. "Make the wight let him go, and fix whatever it did to him, whatever that collar thing did to his mind. Then everything is as it was before all of this happened, and no one can claim to owe anybody anything, or bring any kind of grievance against you."

I held my breath. Thomas seemed to be doing the same. His gaze on me had turned calculating, and the corner of his mouth away from Mab, the one she couldn't see, had quirked up just the tiniest fraction.

After a pause that seemed, to my heightened senses, to stretch out forever, Mab said, "I believe thou hast a fine and acute mind, Lady Knight. Thy bargain is acceptable."

She lifted a hand fractionally. The wight's body shuddered, and its fingers peeled back, leaving livid bruises on Harry's throat. He staggered forward and dropped to his knees, coughing.

I saw Thomas twitch and then still himself. He wanted to go to Harry, of course, but he couldn't in front of Mab. I did, too, but I still couldn't move, though I was aware of the strain in my muscles from holding the same position. In particular, the arm holding up my gun had begun to ache viciously.

"A boon for a boon," Mab said. She turned her head and looked directly at me. I wasn't sure if it was just my morbid imagination that made me feel suddenly much colder. "Do not presume to think thou hast bested me, Lady Knight. Should we meet again -- and I believe we shall -- thou may not be so clever twice. But this day, our business here is concluded."

The frozen wave around the wight's ankles suddenly sucked it over the edge, into the lake. It happened so quickly that I barely registered it before the creature was gone, its face still frozen -- literally -- in an all-too-human look of horror.

Mab herself, and her interpreter, simply vanished -- without fanfare, I thought, but then an especially large wave crashed into the breakwater, showering spray across us. I guess that it's impossible for faeries to do anything without a certain amount of drama.

I stumbled and my gun hand dropped as control of my body came back. I holstered my Sig, flexed my aching fingers, and then strolled to Harry with what I hoped was a suitably casual attitude.

Running to him, after all, would give his ego more of a boost than I really thought it needed.

"You do realize, don't you," Harry said hoarsely as I knelt on one side of him and Thomas on the other, "that she could've frozen the blood vessels in your eyes and ripped them out the back of your head for insulting her?"

The worst part was that I knew he was right, and as everything hit me, I was one step away from falling into a miserable, trembling heap. Instead, I fell back on my usual defense: sarcasm. "Look who's talking," I said. "You insult _everyone_."

"Yeah, but you're not supposed to be taking diplomacy lessons from me," Harry said, and coughed. He raised a hand to rub his throat. "Ow."

"You know who we are, right?" Thomas asked him.

"Of course I do, dumbass. Stop making me talk."

We helped Harry up and supported him, one on either side. As soon as he was back on his feet, Harry punched Thomas in the arm.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"That was for almost selling yourself to Mab on my account," Harry said. "You twit."

Yeah. Definitely himself again.

By the time we got back to my car, Thomas's freezing clothes crackling with ice at every step he took, the car was running and warm inside. Justine slid over to let me behind the wheel, and Thomas helped Harry into the back. Justine had, impressively, gotten the car turned around without miring it in the snow. I crept gently down the unplowed road, back towards the city proper.

"Why are _you_ wet?" I heard Harry ask Thomas, in the backseat.

"Because you _Fuego'_ d me in the face, you asshole."

"I did?" Harry said.

"Yes. You did. Don't get guilt-trippy on me. I'll punch you in the face one of these days when you don't expect it, and we'll be even."

"Gee," Harry said, "something to look forward to," and then he was quiet. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw that he'd fallen asleep leaning against the window.

 

* * *

 

 _Harry_

 

I woke up when the car door opened and I toppled onto Murphy. I took a moment to take stock of my body -- everything hurt, but that was nothing new -- and then my brain. Cause and effect seemed to be staying in their usual places (cause: me lean on door, door open; effect: me fall on Murphy) and I was able to hold them in my head without losing them, so, yeah. My brain seemed to be working about as well as it ever had.

" _Today_ , Dresden?" Murphy said. My upper half was leaning out of the car onto her; only her continued intervention kept me from faceplanting in the snow.

I let her womanhandle me out of the car into the snow, only then realizing that we were alone. "Hey, where'd Thomas and Justine go?"

"I dropped them off back at Thomas's place. They said goodbye and I think Thomas poked you a couple of times, but you didn't even twitch." She prodded me gently. "Come on, Sleeping Beauty."

I stopped again when I saw the little gingerbread cottage. "Hey," I said. "This isn't my house."

"Gee, Sherlock, you'd think you were a detective or something." Murphy hooked an arm around my waist and helped me up the walk to the front door. "No, I took you back to my place, because you really need to get warmed up and I don't think a cold shower is going to do it."

"Mouse," I said, as she fumbled one-handed through her keys. "I left Mouse alone in my apartment all evening. He'll be worried."

"Harry," Murphy said patiently, as she finally got the door unlocked and reached through to snap on the light, "Mouse is a _dog_. He probably hasn't even noticed you're gone."

I'm pretty sure Murphy thinks that I have this cute little pet-owner delusion about Mouse's intelligence. Oh well. She'll find out.

"You could call him," she added. "You know, let him know not to worry. Chat a bit."

I manfully ignored that. Instead, I protested, "I don't have anything to change into," as she shepherded me into her living room. No matter how many times I'm in Murphy's house, it never ceases to impress me with how charmingly cute it is.

"I'll find something."

"No offense, Murph, but I don't think your clothes will fit me. Though you do have a couple of cute little numbers I've been dying to try on."

"Don't be an ass," she said. "There's always something around from the male Murphys: cousins, brothers-in-law --" She shuddered briefly at that thought. "I think I might even still have some of Dad's old things around. So, get into the shower before you pass out on my floor."

Even the male Murphys, at least the ones I'd seen, were a good foot shorter than me, but I decided not to look a gift hot shower in the mouth. Murphy left me in her adorable little bathroom with a pile of clean towels.

Hot water. There are few things in the world more wonderful, especially when you're chilled to the bone and can count the number of hot showers you've had in the last decade on the fingers of one hand. I stayed under the water until I was all pruned up and it was starting to run colder, then wobbled out of the shower to discover a neatly folded pile of clothing on the floor. I hadn't even heard her come in.

I was surprised to discover that it fit. In fact, it fit pretty well. In fact --

"Murphy," I said, reeling into the living room on a hot-shower-induced high, "your male cousins' clothes look a lot like _my_ clothes."

Murphy looked up. She had her gun spread out on the coffee table, where she was cleaning and oiling it. The parts were laid out on a series of doilies. The cognitive dissonance did weird things to my brain.

"They _are_ your clothes," she said. "While you were in the shower, I called Thomas and asked if he'd mind picking up some of your things and dropping them off, since you were spending the night here. And asked him to let out Mouse while he was at it. He and Justine just left."

I winced as I flopped limply onto the couch. "Thomas knows I'm spending the night?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So he'll never let me hear the end of it." I stared blearily up at the ceiling for a minute before I said, "Wait, I'm spending the night? I'm not spending the night."

"Yes, you are," Murphy said placidly. She picked up a small brush from one of the doilies and examined it for a moment before starting on the gun's bore. "You're about to collapse and in no condition to drive. On behalf of the Chicago PD, I'm ordering you off the streets. Besides, your car is nowhere near here."

"Hell's bells, the Beetle," I agreed, still staring at the ceiling. "It's still across town where we found the wight."

"It'll be fine. It might get a little buried when the snowplows go through, but I'll help dig you out." She looked up at me. "What's the matter?"

I'd rolled up my sleeve and was studying the burn scars on my arm. They were spaced in the exact arrangement of the gemstones on the wight's collar, but they were already half-healed, looking like I'd burned myself days ago rather than hours.

"You're back to normal, right?" Murphy added, sounding a bit anxious. "I mean, what passes for normal with you, anyway."

I flexed my stiff, scarred left hand, pulled in a little energy just to check, and released it gently through my other hand into the couch. The lights flickered, and one of the bulbs in the kitchen blew.

"Sorry," I said.

Murphy glared at me. "Go to sleep, Dresden, before I have to replace all my appliances."

I sighed, flopped back and stretched out on the couch. My feet hung off the end. I didn't care. It felt great.

"For pete's sake," Murphy said. "I have a guest room. Just give me a minute to make up the bed."

"I'm comfortable here," I mumbled. "Be asleep in no time anyway."

Murphy sighed, set down her gun parts and came around the coffee table. She tugged on my arm, hard. "Up, up. You sleep on that all night, you'll need a chiropractor."

"Comfortable," I muttered, batting at her. "Go away, Mom."

"Get _up_." She finally managed to haul me back onto my aching legs. I leaned on her heavily. Given the differences in our height, the first thing that popped into my bleary brain was a vague memory of those old Salvador Dali paintings with the melting clocks and furniture and stuff, with the crutches holding them up. Murphy was the little crutch to my melting clock.

She smelled like gun oil and strawberry shampoo. It was a nice combination. Very Murphy.

We wobbled down the hall and Murphy deposited me on something soft. It was dark. It was nice. "Mmm," I said. I wriggled around a little. The pillows smelled like Murphy too. "Hey, is this your bed?"

"Yeah," Murphy said. When I twisted my head around to squint up at her, I could tell even in the dimness that her cheeks had gone pink. "The guest beds are all stripped down at the moment. If you don't require clean sheets, this seemed easiest."

"Murphy, this is _perfect_ ," I said, heartfelt, burying my face in pillows so that the last word came out muffled to incomprehensibility. The pillows were warm and soft and already sweeping me away on a tide of blessed sleep.

Murphy laughed softly, and patted my shoulder; then I felt her tug blankets up over me. "Night, Dresden. Sleep tight."

"Ngghh," I agreed, and I sank down gratefully into a sleep so deep I didn't even dream.


End file.
